YouTube Team aware of Dark Mode issue on web version, fix expected soon

Just about every application, and many websites, now support Dark Mode or a night theme. And those who tend to use their phones or computers at night, know exactly how good it is to have a night mode option.

Apart from the obvious benefit of preventing your eyes from being blasted with light from a white background at night, some even find dark modes to be more visually pleasing.

YouTube is one such platform that offers users a dark mode theme on its application as well as on the web version. Therefore, users can watch videos comfortably at night on their PCs and mobile devices.

But it seems that many users on the web version of YouTube are complaining that the Dark Mode theme is now broken.

We’ve shared multiple reports from affected users below along with a screenshot which shows the broken dark mode theme:

Why does my youtube switch to light mode every time I refresh? I want it to stayy in dark mode (Source)

idk what is going with @youtube but the damn website won’t stay in dark mode and its really grinding my gear ya know (Source)

Okay, I’m getting really pissed off @YouTube! I put it on Dark Mode for a reason! I turn off Autoplay for a reason! You never used to have a problem saving those settings for my browser, but now I have to redo that every fucking time I open a new tab! WTF?!(Source)

youtube still will not stay in dark mode like if i open it in a new tab it just keeps going back??? it literally has never had a problem before this im actually pissed (Source)

A quick search on Twitter would serve you with dozens of new reports from users. Therefore, it seems this is a widespread problem that is affecting users in all regions.

According to most reports, the Dark Mode theme on the web version of YouTube simply does not remain. Opening YouTube on another tab or refreshing the page automatically resets the theme to Light Mode.

We also ran into the same problem while conducting a quick test to see whether the problem is present on a wider scale.

Traditionally, when a user selects the Dark Mode option on YouTube, the theme option is saved and remains the same even after refreshing the page or loading YouTube in a new tab.

This Dark Mode issue on the web version of YouTube seems to have been around for a few days at least, however, YouTube has still not fixed it at the time of writing.

But thanks to the influx of numerous complaints, YouTube has finally responded to a few of them by stating that the problem will be looked into. Here’s the message TeamYouTube on Twitter has been sharing:

Thanks for sending this our way – we’ve seen similar reports about this issue. We’re letting the team know, and will get back to you once there’s an update. Appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Now that the problem has been brought to the attention of YouTube, we expect that the issue will be fixed sooner rather than later.

However, if you aren’t willing to wait for YouTube to fix the Dark Mode issue on the web version, you could try force enabling dark mode on Google Chrome — the browser that most users are reporting the issue on.

To force enable the dark theme in Chrome, enter this in the address bar; chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark, then click on the drop-down menu beside the Force Dark Mode for Web Contents option and select Enabled.

This quick workaround seems to have worked for at least one user who tried it, and it’s likely going to work for all.

In the meantime, we will continue to keep tabs on the situation and will post an update once YouTube fixes the problem or when there are any further developments.

Of course, this isn’t the only recent bug YouTube users have had to deal with. We’ve reported on other bugs such as the one that turns on captions automatically even when disabled and the AS-10 error.

Matter of fact, you can check out our dedicated tracker to know all about the bugs and issues on YouTube and the pending improvements that are to come to the app or web version.

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